


Losing Grip

by ineswrites



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Background Relationships, Bisexual Character, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Infidelity, Jealousy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 21:37:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13935924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineswrites/pseuds/ineswrites
Summary: It was perfect while it lasted.





	Losing Grip

**Author's Note:**

> This has been haunting me for 3 months.

1.

 

It was perfect while it lasted. Brock’s fingers twisted in Jack’s hair, his mouth on his throat. His weight on top of Jack’s hips. Jack’s cock thrusting into his heat. Jack savored having Brock’s complete attention.

While it lasted.

He was still recovering from his orgasm when Brock slapped his flank and got up. He heard the rustling of fabric and the clatter of a belt buckle. He turned his head to the side to watch Brock get dressed. Brock didn’t say a word, but he winked with a smirk. Acting like everything was alright.

Why wouldn’t he? It was for him. He had had his fun, had gotten what he wanted. Now he would come back to his soulmate and do soulmate stuff. Whatever those were, Jack didn’t know and would never find out. Maybe he’d plan another outing, but not with Jack. Jack didn’t know how many there were exactly, giving Brock satisfaction and attention he craved, but he didn’t want to. It didn’t matter if there were two or five if he wanted to be the only one.

Brock couldn’t feel the pain in Jack’s chest when he left, didn’t turn to see the veil of tears on his eyes. The front door shut behind him and Jack didn’t hear even a fucking goodnight.

But it was okay. Brock would come back eventually. He always did.

Right?

 

2.

 

It would be easier – and smarter – if Jack wasn’t in love with Brock ever since he could remember. He watched him train in the gym and change in the locker room, laughing and talking to his teammates. He would listen in on his conversations, committing every new detail about his personal life to memory and liking him more and more for it, while Brock didn’t even know he existed.

The day he got on Alpha and Brock finally noticed him was the happiest day of his life. Or so he thought.

In reality, it was the beginning of the trainwreck his life had become. The beginning of long days filled with a yearning so strong Jack didn’t know what to do with himself. The beginning of countless moments of pure ecstasy of having Brock for himself followed by the painful reality crashing down around him.

 

\--

 

Learning Brock was the Secretary’s soulmate was a wrecking ball to the chest.

“We need to be discreet,” Brock had said, pulling Jack close to press his mouth to his neck, and Jack’s mind was too hazy with lust to wonder about it.

But he understood as soon as he pushed Brock’s legs apart and saw a black mark on his inner thigh: ‘Alexander Pierce’ in tight handwriting.

He felt cheated. He thought this should have arisen in their conversations, few that there had been.

Brock raised his head from the pillow. “What’s the matter?”

Jack looked pointedly at the mark.

“What, you didn’t know?”

It hit Jack that he should have and he felt his face burn with shame. To his defense, it wasn’t something Brock liked to discuss, or he would have heard about it.

Brock seemed genuinely surprised. “Dude, we’re engaged.”

He raised his hand to show off the titanium ring on his finger, making Jack feel even worse for not noticing it earlier, although he could swear Brock wasn’t wearing it at work.

“Then what are you doing here?” Jack asked, resigned.

“Really killing the mood here.” Brock’s hand dropped on the sheets and he sighed. “Pierce’s a busy man,” he said and Jack noted how he called his fiancé by his last name but tried not to put much significance to it. “He doesn’t have time to… meet my needs.” Brock’s hazel eyes studied Jack’s face. “Does it bother you? We’re not gonna fuck after all? Because that’d be really, really disappointing.”

No. No, it didn’t bother him.

 

\--

 

Jack couldn’t stop himself from wondering what Pierce was doing when Brock was fucking him, or from imagining what Pierce and Brock did in bed – _how_ they did it – when he was alone. There was something masochistic in it. But it didn’t _bother_ him. Not Pierce at least, Pierce was a given.

What bothered him were _the others_. The men Brock sought attention from while he was ignoring Jack. The men Brock paid attention to while he was _with_ Jack.

He knew he had no right to be jealous of a man he had no claim over. He knew they led their separate lives, that what they did in the shadows was just a bit of fun, no strings attached.

But it changed nothing for him; there was still searing anger rushing through his veins whenever it happened.

 

\--

 

“Where’s yours?”

Brock shuffled closer to Jack’s right side, his lingering in bed foreshadowing a round two.

“My what?” Jack kept his eyes closed, pleasantly surprised Brock was still in his bedroom, like he always was whenever it happened.

“Your mark, jackass. I’ve been looking, couldn’t find it. Where’re you hiding it?” Brock raised his arm, presumably to take a peek at his armpit, and Jack couldn’t find it in himself to fight him off.

“Don’t have one.”

The silence his confession met with was worrying enough for him to open his eyes. Brock was studying his face, possibly suspecting Jack was joking.

“Seriously.” Jack nodded. “That even possible?”

Jack sighed. He turned onto his back, curling his arm underneath his head, and fixed his eyes on the ceiling. “I’m among the _lucky_ one percent of population that was born without one.”

His mother used to call him a cursed child. Forsaken by God, she had said. Undeserving of love. Jack himself had believed he was incapable of loving another person. He had been wrong.

He wished he hadn’t. He made his peace with loving someone who’d never love him back, but it still hurt more than a broken bone.

“Lucky bastard,” Brock muttered. “I wish I was you.”

Jack looked at him wide-eyed. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Brock rolled onto his stomach, propping himself up on his elbows. “I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully. “You ain’t limited to just that one person fate chose for you. You can choose for yourself.”

Jack snorted. “Only everyone else is taken. I’ve been alone my whole life.”

“What about that one percent?”

He shrugged, his gaze shifting back to the ceiling. “Never met another one like me.”

Brock’s hand crept up Jack’s chest. “But you’re not alone now.” He pulled himself up to press a kiss to the corner of Jack’s mouth. “You have me.”

It was a lie. Jack never had him, not really.

 

\--

 

It was easy to start dreaming about making Brock breakfast and bringing him coffee to bed; about going out together to places where no one would know them and trading kisses without a care in the world.

Nothing like that took place. Brock would call whenever he had an itch he wanted Jack to scratch, used to the fact Jack was always available, that there was no one there to share him with, never once asking what _Jack_ wanted. Jack never dared to make demands, aware he had no right.

But they grew close. Special. Brock spent more time with Jack than he did with anyone else, and Jack stupidly let himself think Brock actually felt something for him. Not _love_ , he wasn’t that optimistic. But he thought he sensed something there, some warm feelings kept in shameful secret.

It helped that Brock had a talent for saying exactly what one wanted to hear. Compliments and sweet promises came easily to him, and it was equally easy to believe them.

“I told you to keep your eyes closed.”

“They’re closed.”

“I can see you peeping. You want me to blindfold you?”

Jack bit his lower lip.

“Oh, you do.” Brock chuckled. “Maybe later.”

Jack obediently shut his eyes. For the lack of other stimuli, he focused on the sharp tip of a pen tracing over the skin on his chest.

“If you’re drawing a dick, I’ll spank you.”

Brock made an impatient shushing sound. “Don’t make me regret not drawing one.”

It was a joke, Jack knew; Brock didn’t actually want to be spanked. And besides, if he wanted something from Jack, all he needed to do was just say a word.

Brock put the pen away. “Okay, you can look now.”

Jack propped himself up on his elbows and looked down. The sight of a black 'Brock Rumlow' in cursive over his heart stunned him into silence.

“You’re mine now,” Brock said, his lips twitching as he tried to suppress a grin.

Warmth bloomed inside Jack’s chest, crept up his neck to his face as for the first time in his life he felt he _belonged_ , even if it was just for the night.

He rubbed his skin raw the following morning in his tries to wash the ink off. If anybody at SHEILD caught a whiff of it, Jack didn’t doubt he’d be a dead man.

 

\--

 

Jack didn’t know what he did to cause the sudden change in Brock’s attitude towards him. If it was something he said, or the weariness he was sensing reached its peak and Brock got tired of him. All he knew was that one day, everything fell apart like a house of cards.

He was needy and clingy and yearning, but he’d rather die than ever let it show, so he didn’t ask, feeling the wounds on his heart open and bleed whenever he witnessed Brock flirt with yet another guy, looking for something Jack was so ready and eager to give. But he didn’t want it from Jack, not anymore.

How could Jack ever think Brock felt anything deeper than fleeting lust for him?

It’d be easier to bear if they didn’t work together, if he didn’t have to experience Brock ignore him almost every single day. Every time the pain in his being was replaced by emptiness, he thought that maybe he was getting over it – right until he caught a glimpse of Brock’s black hair and toned skin and his heart swelled.

 

\--

 

Jack was used to being an outsider, ignored by everybody else, but as he got older, the tables turned. He knew singles who grew frustrated of not having met their soulmates yet, or worse, lonely after losing them. To them, Jack appeared as a glint of light in the dark.

He shared a few weeks of harmless fun with McKinnon until he grew weary of her. Collins kept pestering him, and after decades of being rejected by society, he couldn’t find it in himself to say no. They were his friends and he loved them, but they weren’t Brock and with time, he found himself ignoring their calls more often.

He wasn’t _waiting_ , he tried to convince himself. His heart still jumped whenever his phone jingled, trained to do so over the last months, but he wasn’t holding his breath for Brock renewing his interest in him. He got rid of his silly illusions of what the thing between them had been. But somewhere in his soul, he felt it wasn’t over yet.

One day he checked his phone after it announced he got a text, and it was Brock’s name on the screen.

‘Got any plans tmrw nite?’

Jack stared at the text for minutes, tapping the screen when it threatened to go black. He wanted to be petty and ignore it. He wanted to still be angry. But it was peace surging through him, filling him from the inside. It was like the world started moving again.

 

3.

 

“You’re perfect for me, Jackie,” Brock moaned as he slid inside Jack.

 _Don’t listen, he doesn’t mean it_ , Jack thought to himself, but shivered all the same at the fond pet name.

He heard Brock’s shaky breath above as he crawled up over him, enveloping him in heat, sliding in deeper. Brock’s mouth ghosted over his nape, making his skin tingle and his hairs stand on ends.

“So fucking beautiful you could make a grown man cry.”

_Don’t. Don’t make my heart melt with your empty words._

Brock rolled his hips way too slowly, and, twisting his fingers into the white sheets, Jack arched up for more. Always too needy, too greedy, never sated with what Brock was willing to give.

Brock moaned, his right hand clenching on Jack’s shoulder. “I’d fuckin’ _kill_ for your name on my skin,” he growled.

_No, please. Please don’t get my hopes up like that you absolute asshole, I can’t deal with that._

His orgasm was weak and forced out of him, and where there should be bliss and satisfaction, self-pity and anxiety settled deep inside Jack’s guts. He was glad one half of his face was buried in a pillow and the other hidden behind his arm, so Brock couldn’t see the hollow look on it. Not that he was worried Brock would ask about it. He was scared Brock would see it and not even care.

A wet kiss pressed into his nape. The sheets rustled. The belt buckle clattered. The carpet-muffled footsteps crossed the room. The door closed.

He wasn’t worthy even of a fucking goodnight.

But it was okay. Brock would come back. He always did.

Right?


End file.
